Timing the Future of Tech

Horses, carts and roads to travel: An analogy of how technology develops -- with a long view toward predicting what to bet on.

By

Jack Falvey

Updated June 26, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

By

Jack Falvey

Updated June 26, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

WHEN MISTER ROBINSON TOLD THE RECENT COLLEGE graduate played by Dustin Hoffman that the one word that would unlock his future was plastics, he was wrong. Plastics was a big deal in the 1950s, but The Graduate was set in 1960s California, where the one word was silicon. Who knew?

Probably some of the neighbors who weren't fooling around with Mrs. Robinson, who were working at places like Hewlett-Packard and Fairchild Semiconductor....